F...

Feelings.. those inclinations that have bypassed the brain and emerge like the weather, sometimes knocking us right off the horse. They say that thinking is where we get to engage the brain; feelings engage the heart. Are they at opposite ends of a scale? Or parallel channels on the mixer? Is it possible to operate both at the same time?

Perhaps that is a bit like rubbing your tummy while patting your head. It probably requires a good deal of concentration, and a split screen somewhere in the consciousness to monitor both simultaneously..are feelings just a different kind of thought?

I’ve done one of those personality type tests, and am told that I most often favour feeling over thinking. That’s well and good so long as I am sitting next to a feely type. If I end up sharing a bench with a thinkin person, I find myself using all kinds of hand gestures to try and weave my feelings into some kind of logical arrangement. It’s tricky. It’s practicality versus ascetics, physics versus fantasy.

It’s hard enough to put thoughts into words. Trying to jam the pillow-like forms of various feelings into little word boxes is exhausting! ...And this is why we are gifted with more than one method of communication! Body language for instance. Do they teach us to read that in school? They should! Even the extreme thinkers of this world often proclaim the way they are feeling  in posture and mannerism..

For those of us who rely on feelings, perhaps we should take up signing..it’s great for expressing oneself, since facial expressions also come into play..and it’s less noisy.

So how do I feel today? Pretty good, thank you.. well alright, a little frustrated. If communication is a science, I feel I’m still trying to fathom 101.  But here I am, still at it, pulling thoughts like loose threads from the fabric of my mind and stitching up little blog samplers...thinking it through.. but more often than not...just feeling my way.

A Love Poem

I wanted to write the most unromantic love poem I could;
Something gutsy and gory.
Why is it you feel so much in your gut? 
Shouldn’t feeling be in the heart? ..or the head maybe, since feelings are thoughts too. 
But no. It’s the tummy that twists with fear when you realize you missed the last bus. 
And your guts squirm with indescribable pangs when that one you love to be with leaves. 
You’d think love would make its home in a heart, 
but here we are losing our appetite and feeling weird in the pit of the stomach.
I wanted to write the most unromantic love poem I could, 
because sometimes love is ugly, spilling your innards all over the floor. 

©Julia Zed

Fleur de lis in France...